


across the wine-dark sea

by simplyprologue



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Death in Childbirth, F/M, Future Fic, Kid Fic, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:25:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7487946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a familiar tale — a child is brought into the world, pink and squalling, covered in blood and vernix. Then, her mother dies. It is an old tale, one steeped in beginnings and promise. But in the moment of death, the room reeking of iron and sick, there is no promise. Nothing but a pale frail woman and a bastard child, nameless and penniless, her father across the ocean.</p><p>Her mother dies, and she is as good as an orphan in a world that does not take pity on bastard orphans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	across the wine-dark sea

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** I have literally no justification for this so uh... you will all suffer with me. Trigger warnings for all sorts of things from maternal death to childbirth itself to cadavers to gun violence. The tale of a bastard orphan girl sorely in need of a break. If I recall correctly there are a few references to Hamilton and half a West Wing reference in here. Title is from a line in The Odyssey: 
> 
>  
> 
> _Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark sea,_  
>  _even so I will endure…_  
>  _For already have I suffered full much,_  
>  _and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war._  
>  _Let this be added to the tale of those._

It is a familiar tale — a child is brought into the world, pink and squalling, covered in blood and vernix. Then, her mother dies. It is an old tale, one steeped in beginnings and promise. But in the moment of death, the room reeking of iron and sick, there is no promise. Nothing but a pale frail woman and a bastard child, nameless and penniless, her father across the ocean.

Her mother dies, and she is as good as an orphan in a world that does not take pity on bastard orphans.

 

 

 

_My dearest girl,_

_All that I could have given you in this life was your name, and this letter, which I hope holds the answers you are seeking. I was burdened by remorse that I was soon for departing this world, and left you defenseless at the mercy of others. I caused your father to abandon us, and deprived you of material comfort and the love of a mother and a father. I pray that the America that is now in the midst of its own birth pangs is a kinder country to children born outside wedlock._

_You were the best thing I have done in my life. In my arms, you are three days old, your eyes blue and clear. They will have changed. Your father and I both had dark eyes, but to me you shall always be my blue-eyed babe. I am so blessed to have spent these precious few days with you, my darling daughter. I loved your father dearly and in ways I did not truly understand, and my impossible love for him is multiplied in you as if it were the most natural thing. My life was full of many sorrows, uncertainty and loss encroaching in from every eave and from under every doorway. I most heartily pray that your life is full of yellow summer days and cornflowers and laughter, that you spent your girlhood and maidenhood unencumbered by the evils of the world in a country free from tyranny._

_I know you will have wondered about your father. Know that I solicited promises from your erstwhile Aunts and Uncles and Guardians to speak nothing of him, ill or otherwise. I do not want you chasing my demons across the ocean._

_Your father was a British officer from Scotland, a Major in regular forces, who commanded a Garrison at Oyster Bay. He was a soldier with no particular affinity or talent for war, nor for rooting out spies._

_I was a spy. He was the man I was assigned to befriend and coax into making our work easier. I do not know what your familiars will have told you about their time in the war — I do not know if we will have won or have lost, if you will have grown up a proud American or a loyal subject to the crown. But I was an American, and for a time at least, we were too. I entrusted your care to associates, for when I revealed to your father my nascent betrayal to our courtship in order to save his life, he broke with me and returned to Britain. It was months after his departure that I learned I was carrying you, my love. Please do not think too poorly of us. Or if you do, think poorly of me. I was the woman who laid with a man whose heart she had broken on the day of their very wedding, before the reverend, the magistrate, and townsfolk. I hope by the time this letter finds you, you are old enough to understand perhaps enough of love and longing and heartbreak to understand why I acted as I did…_

 

  

 

She is two-and-twenty, and a new bride attired in layers of fine ivory muslin in a new gown that cost more than the small dowry she brings to the marriage and a spencer jacket made of cream silk gifted to her by her new husband’s mother. It is, all things considered, an intimate affair. The snows that made the roads in Setauket impassable all winter have melted, leaving thoroughfares a mess of intractable mud.

The ceremony proceeds, and she is escorted down the aisle by Benjamin Tallmadge in an ill-fitting army uniform with buttons that shine like gold but a waistline that is less likely to be coaxed into appreciating the passage of time. He smooths the veil from her face, and kisses her forehead like he did on the day she was born.

“She would be so proud,” he murmurs to her.

A wicked grin, dark eyes lighting up in a sharp angular face softened by femininity. She does not look so much like her mother as they had hoped, but she is beautiful in her own way.  “She would be fuming across the rows at my groom’s father.”

“Well.” His lips form into something approximate to a smile. A letter resides in his saddlebag, a message from mother to daughter that has been delayed through broken-off engagements, scandal, and two separate duels. _Promise me, Ben. Promise me._ Before the end of the celebrations, he will place it into her hands. Ben cannot bear to think what Anna would feel today, sitting in the front pew of a church in a town she hated at the end of her life, dabbing at her eyes as her only child entered into wedlock with a good man. He was there when she passed, and before that, he held her hand steady as she wrote the only words her daughter would know from her. “I can promise you that she would be doing more than that.”

“I do wish…” she says, but does not finish. _I do wish._ Her gaze falls to the psalter in her hand, a book bound by dull leather.

Ben brushes his fingers over an orange blossom in her hair. He knows that Abby had been up half the night collecting the most perfect of the blooms, cutting them into shape and teasing them with wire into a magnificent crown. _She has no mother._ He looks at the embroidery on her silk jacket, the fine pearlescent fastenings — from Mary. _The girl has no mother._

The exchange lasts no more than a moment, but in his mind it stretches its fingers outwards and closes it into his palm, something to be held onto tightly and treasured. Anna is not here. They all must live this for her.

He kisses her forehead again.

Then he clasps her hands with the groom’s, a funny sort of man with thick glasses and noncommittal hair that could be brown or blonde, straight or wavy, thick or limp. But their love is true, and he is not the only man in the room with his hand on the pommel of his sword ready to ascertain that no one in the crowd may decide that the daughter shall follow the fate of the mother.

 

 

 

“I, Andromeda, do take you Thomas to be my lawfully wedded husband—”

Folded inside the wax-thin pages of her psalter is a folded square of Continental blue wool, stitched with fine silver thread the figure of a woman with her arms reaching, unfurled in desperation as she waits for rescue. _Why do you want to name her after a princess in chains?_ He asked Anna, her weak fingers drawing the needle through the scrap of an officer’s jacket.

Her pale lips drew into a line.

_Andromeda — her parents left her to the worst but she — was rescued._

The stars aren’t quite in the right place, but she finishes her task before she is too weak to sit upright or hold a thimble. Ben remembered, rubbing his fingers over the rough fabric, that Anna was never particularly skilled in the domestic arts anyway. The embroidery is not made of silver or gold, contains none of the riches her father’s family has. But it contains something far more precious.

Her mother’s love.

 

 

 

 It’s not until the message from Abby came on a cool evening in late August that they learned why Anna had disappeared before the heat of the summer could truly impugn itself as far north as Washington’s New York headquarters. The message comes in code, at a dead drop, and Ben changes into plain clothes before riding for New Brunswick. When he arrives at a tidy little dwelling, he learns that Anna has been passing herself off as a widow.

And that her pains had begun eight hours ago.

“My mother died,” she tells him, fingers clutching the front of his waistcoat. He must understand, there is so much left undone. She does not know where Edmund has _gone,_ does not knew where a letter might be sent, does not know which ports of call his family sends their ships, if they have any money left in the business at all to send ships. “She died in childbed, Benjamin.”

“I remember,” he soothes her. “I remember, we were twelve.”

She stands in the middle of hers and Abby’s little cottage, bare in her shift, her stomach low and tight and like a small moon distended from her slim frame. Cupping his hands under her elbows, he guides her to the bed. Outside, Cicero waits, a silent sentinel.

“If I die—”

“You will not die, Anna.”

“I do wish,” she says. Then grits her teeth, fisting her hands in the coverlets. Eyes screwing shut, her face turns red with agony.

Kneeling before her, he brushes her hair back from her face. Her dark curls are bound back in a braid, but are threatening their escape. He finds her forehead dotted with sweat and reaches into his jacket for his handkerchief, dabbing at her flushed skin. “Why did you not tell us? Why did you leave without saying a — you had have known since the winter, we could have helped you. Caleb and I would have helped you.”

“I could not bring shame into the General’s camp,” she spits out. The pain ends, and she slumps forwards, rubbing furious circles into her temples around his hands. There is too much care being bestowed upon her, when she would rather scream and cry and throw things. “I thought I could do this myself.”

“A _child?_ Anna.” He cannot imagine. “Does Hewlett know?”

“Of course not.”

Sighing, he concedes her face, but keeps a gentle hand on one of her knees. “We would have found him for you, we would have brought him back—”

“I needn’t meddle in his life any longer,” she says. Tears hem the corners of her eyes, and with a racking sob she buries her face in her hands. It has been many months she last wept. “He is a smarter man than you give him credit for, he is long out of love with me by now. He is intelligent enough to _loathe_ me by now. The _things_ you made me do—”

Another labor pang grips her, and she wails, fingers clawing for purchase. They land on his shoulders, and through the pain their foreheads are brought together. He can feel her puffs of strained breath against his mouth.

“I know,” he comforts her. “I know, I asked a cost too high.”

“We must win the war, you bastard,” she growls. “If this is the life — if my child is to be brought into the world without a father, you owe us America, you bastard.” Biting her lip, she squeezes her tightly again when it feels as though the planetary body attached to her belly is posturing for implosion.

In the silence, Ben elects to not point out Anna’s ironic choice of pejorative for him.

“Damned hell,” she moans.

Helpless, he turns to Abby. “How long does this take?”

A wry grin that contains no mirth comes to her face. Clasping her hands at her waist, she tracks her eyes from Anna to oil lamp burning low on the table and back again. “It takes as long as it takes. Babies are contrary by nature, and this one has been causing their mother trouble for months already.”

“Bloody—”

Her hand slips from his shoulder to cravat, nails turning into soft linen — and then pulling. Wincing, he takes her arm and wraps it around his shoulder. _When?_ He wants to ask. _And how?_ It all makes little sense to him, all of it as it’s pieced together, that Anna came to fell in love with _that_ man, was ready to marry him and abandon it all for Scotland and his safety, then ready to abandon her good name and happiness for his chance to escape. And now to hear — nay, not just _hear_ but to _see_ — that Hewlett had gotten a child on her, a man so adherent to propriety that he powdered his face through the humid Long Island summers.

A mind reels. Caleb, perhaps, would be better suited to untangling the finer threads of attraction and desire.

“Water?” he offers her when it passes. “Ale?”

Pursing her lips, she shakes her head. “It’ll just come right back up. Tis a miserable state, childbirth. You mustn't do this to any unsuspecting woman.”

“I won’t,” he assures her. Then despite himself, asks, “How did this happen to you?”

Behind him, Abby’s skirts rustle against the floorboards, a cough settled somewhere at the top of her throat. But Anna is unfazed, a low self-deprecating laugh boiling on her tongue from somewhere deep in her chest. Such a night. She was so desperate to be unable to forget it, to commit every imperfect detail to her memory. Spent weeks in a lovelorn daze, in fits of silent melancholy and angry distraction. Did not notice that she had missed her monthly courses twice, until she found herself bent at the waist every morning, retching. She will never forget that night with Edmund, and was able to hide it under her petticoats and stomacher for only so long.

“Do you not remember? You were the one who made me ask him for the pass into York City — I had to see him while I was there.”

 

 

 

Her belly is full of rum and her head is as light as spun cotton. If asked, neither would know who kissed whom first, but his tongue runs along the seam of her mouth, asking for entrance. His ship home is set to leave on the morrow, and while he is embittered and she is frail with emotion, they are both attuned to the fact that this may be the last time they may meet in this lifetime. So much separates them now, and he is set on learning to hate her, and she is set on the refusing to acknowledge her love for him.

But the liquor steers them from their charted courses.

It makes him bold, or she does, or it’s a heady tonic of Anna’s waist under his hands and the emptied bottle of rum that has him trailing a line of kisses from her mouth to the apex of her jaw. Her own hands know how to undress a man, and she has him half out of his clothes before he realizes, and then he spends the next several minutes launching his counterassault. He has little experience with carnal pleasure but for the few stolen kisses from his youth, before his parents squandered their ancestral wealth and mismanaged the trade until the company was mortgaged to the hilt.

He was once, as all young men of money and status are, an eligible bachelor despite his eccentricities. But he never eschewed propriety insofar as to take a girl to bed. He had never been even half so tempted.

But Anna’s small palms are warm on his chest, fingers fanning out as she maps the constellations of scars from his time held prisoner in the rebel camp. (From the recesses of his mind, a small voice calls out — _Anna is a rebel spy. She is on their side, not yours. You survived because she pitied you._ But it means nothing, compared to the love he feels for her still and the alcohol warming his blood.) All of the stars could go out in the night, and he would not notice. Celestial navigation is guidance by the pinpricks of candlelight gleaming in her eyes.

They land on the bed, mouths joined again.

She gets him onto his back before kneeling astride him, hefting her shift up to her hips to grind her mound against his erection. It’s too late to guide him, to teach him, to do any of the things she thought she’d do on their wedding night — slow touches in low light, her hands over his as she showed him all the ways to touch a naked woman, how to bring them pleasure. Mercenary in her arousal, she takes control, and takes him inside of her without warning.

“Edmund,” she says, rolling her head to one side. Her hair tumbles down over one shoulder, over her breast.

He’s only half tame.

There’s little finesse to her movements, all need and want and the sloppy rhythm her hips seek is complicated by his inexperience and drunken lack of restraint. But her fingers know how to bring herself to peak, and when her muscles flutter around him he lets out a low grunt, pulling her down as if he wanted to merge their bodies into one flesh. Desperate, he thrusts up into her. They smell like a pair of drunks, taste it the other’s breath and in their sweat.

Anna lets him roll her over and settle in the cradle of her legs, chase his climax with clumsy thrusts. Burying his face in her neck, he licks the distended line of her throat, submitting himself to the male animalistic urge to cover, to protect, to _rut._

She does not mind being used by him in this manner. Scratching her fingers through his short dark hair, she closes her eyes and presses her knees in at his waist.

Pinning her hips to the bed in his room at the tavern, he comes with a series of grunts.

She has half a hope he might collapse atop of her, fall asleep. In the morning be struck by his breeding and genteel pedigree and march her to the magistrate for a special license and marry her on the spot. Which is why when his face goes slack with slumber, Anna extracts herself from the damp bed. She will not be joined with him just because of his sense of honor, horrified or compromised or however it will be, come morning light. It was _she_ who returned to him, after having sense talked into her. She will not let her good sense abandon her now.

Ignoring the stickiness on her thighs and the sweat drying on her back, quickly redresses herself, re-pins her hair, and leaves.

She never sees him again.

 

 

 

“I am ruined, Thomas.” She has not slept in days, and it is evident in her swollen face and red-rimmed eyes, despite Mary Woodhull’s best attempts at dressing her in a fine gown and arranging her hair into neat curls bound by yards of ribbon. Sitting on the chaise, she buries her head in her hands. “God, I’m ruined, aren’t I? Everyone shall know.”

Footsteps across the room.

“No, for God’s sake, Annie.” Kneeling, Thomas pulls her hands away from her face, holding them in his. “Don’t talk like this. You are not ruined.”

She stares incredulously at him.

“But I am! Mr. Strong is dedicated to informing everyone that I am the bastard orphan of an adulteress and a Scotsman! And he is right!” Another wave of tears assails her vision. The shame of it burns her; she has loved her mother and father like any dutiful daughter does, has heeded her uncles’ in their promises that her mother was a good and honorable woman, heeded the falsehoods that she was an orphan born in unfortunate circumstances. None of it was _true._ Mere perfidy, for her comfort. “And if anyone is to be so righteously angered by my existence, so irritated by the slight, it is him. My mother was his legal wife, Thomas. And I am her bastard child, born while he was imprisoned.”

“What does the position of your mother have to do with you?” he asks, blinking owlishly. She loves Thomas, he is one of her dearest friends, but she wonders how a man so intelligent can be so stupid. “How is your entrance into this world your fault, by any means?”

She steals one of her hands back, rubbing it furiously over the site of a burgeoning headache. “My existence is an insult to the man! He was cuckolded by the enemy!”

At ten-and-eight she was _too old_ to permit the falsehoods. She had allowed Andrew to believe she was the Woodhulls’ orphan cousin, poor but respectable. She had allowed it, even though she had known — or rather, had been _told_ — that her mother was without family, that her mother and father had _not_ been married, that they had been in love, unable to secure a license for marriage before her father’s death because to the war … but she loves Andrew.

Loved Andrew.

And so she lied to him.

“Your parents…”

“What about my parents?” she asks, voice sharp and unforgiving but she cannot bring herself to care. He does not mind her when she is unladylike. “My God, why was I even brought to Setauket…”

“I do not pretend to remember them well. I was a small boy. But I know that things cannot be so simple as Selah Strong says. I know they are not, Annie,” he says, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “You have heard the way Colonel Tallmadge and Mr. Brewster and even my father speak about your dear mother. She was not some heartless harlot throwing herself at every passing redcoat.”

She sighs, blinks, and looks at him.

“Just the one.”

“Just… the one,” he says, conceding to agreement. “He was a good man, Annie. I remember that much about him.”

“I did not know his name. I don’t know why I never thought to ask his name before. I am — God, I am so stupid, Thomas. I have been so ignorant, so naive.” Until now, she has been a child. Not anymore, from now she is her own agent. She is a woman grown, and must advocate for herself to obtain the truth and live her truth with as much dignity as she can muster. Pursing her lips, she swallows over the painful knot in her throat. “Edmund Hewlett.”

Unbidden, a sob wracks her.

“It’s all right. It’s all right.”

Her head snaps up, and she chokes down her tears. “It is not all right, Thomas! I am penniless, I am nameless, and then I love — the man who professed to _love me_ has — he left me. He has broken our engagement under the accusation of fraud and he has left.” Biting her cracked bottom lip, she shakes her head. “I will never be loved. Not now.”

“No… no… that is _not_ true.” He presses a kiss to the back of her hand.

“It is! I am ruined!” She takes a deep breath. It catches in her lungs. “A man born so lowly may — he may fight in a war and raise his station, he may become educated and a celebrated scholar, he may change his position in society. But it is different, for girls. You know it to be true. You are so good, Thomas, and kind. But most people are not.”

She begins to cry once more, but silently. Squeezing her eyes shut, fat tear droplets escape down her face, catching at her jaw.

“The fact that anyone has the power to make you feel this wretched — I swear to God, Annie, if there was anything I could do to put this to rights.” Leaning up, he presses their foreheads together, close enough that her quickened breaths fog his glasses. “I could get on my horse this very moment and ride for Andrew’s family home in New York City. I could drag him back here. I will do it, you need only ask.”

“He does not love me. I fear he never did,” she whispers. If Andrew loved her, why didn’t he stay? Is love not enough?  

Thomas snorts. “The dowry Colonel Tallmadge provided is not so large, Annie.”

Her mouth gapes, eyes opening wide. For a moment, he deeply regrets the thoughtless quip, until the corners of her mouth shape into a smile and she snorts. Then the snort turns into a giggle, which turns into riotous shaking of her shoulders as she laughs, and laughs, and laughs. He looks at her with an expression of wonder on his broad face, a small grin find itself on his own mouth.

Somehow, though, her happiness only adds kindling to his fiery temper — she should always be allowed to be happy.

“Thank you,” she breathes, once she calms. “For that.”

“Always, my friend.”

At that, he stands, brushing nonexistent wrinkles from his trousers. He seems nervous, but resolved. Quirking his mouth into a worrisome smile, he reaches for his hat, left on the table and begins systematically crushing the brim in his grip.

“Where are you going?” she asks, also getting to her feet.

“Andrew may have left for to safety of his family home, but there is another man—”

“Thomas?” She cocks her head.

“I cannot allow him to continue to spew such language about you to the town,” he tells the floor, his mother’s imported French rug. “Your mother had her sins, it is true. And she sinned against him, and the Lord. But you are blameless in this. And someone ought to remind Selah Strong that he abandoned his wife, first.”

“Thomas, no.” Stepping forward, she tries to grab his wrist. But he takes a step back, anticipating her.

“The way vulnerable children are treated in a society that ought to protect them,” he says, looking at her level. Anger dances in his eyes. “Where is my father?”

God, no.

She doesn’t answer him, staring open-mouthed as conviction sets his features into a hard look. He nods, then retreats from the sitting room in search of Uncle Woodhull — and, she suspects, his flintlock pistols.

“Thomas!” she cries.

 

 

 

She does not know what possesses her to follow them down to Strong Tavern, protesting the whole foot trip down. Thomas is set on his course of action, and his father has volunteered as his second. _This is madness,_ she tells them. But neither seems to hear. No one pays her any mind, and she stands outside the tavern with her hand over her mouth, cringing when voices are raised inside.

It all happens so _quickly._

A crowd assembles for the duel — Selah Strong selects someone from it as _his_ second, a man Annie does not recognize but assumes is a veteran of the war based on the way he carries himself. In the spectacle, she is an unremarkable bystander, even though it is _her_ honor at stake here.

It happens so quickly. Thomas and Mr. Strong stand back to back, each counting to ten as they pace away from each other. She hopes for Thomas to point his gun at the sky, to throw away his shot because so help her _God_ if he gets shot over her. They face each other, each aiming true. Andromeda thinks such moments in life might be extended as the horror pervades the temporal landscape. But they are not. Thomas shoots, and she flinches. Then, a moment later, Mr. Strong shoots. The smell of gun smoke is thick in the air, and she clutches her pashmina to her shoulders as it clears.

A bloom of red spreads on Mr. Strong’s left shirtsleeve.

After that, the moment passes in a blur. Thomas returns the pistol to his father, stripping off his jacket as he strides to Mr. Strong. He orders him to be carried inside, and then… at some point later, Annie realizes Uncle Woodhull is leading her away, all the way back to Whitehall. He sits her on the front stoop, and brings her a tumbler of some liquor. Whisky, by the burn of it down her throat. They sit in silence, hers reproachful, as they await Thomas’ return or news of his arrest. Sometime later, he sees his loping form appear at the tree line.

“You shot him!” she shouts when he’s within distance.

He waves a hand over his face, as if batting away an errant fly.

“I fixed it.”

“Thomas, you’re a surgeon!” she protests.

“That is how I was able to fix it.”

She turns onto Abraham, scowling. But of course, he is entirely unperturbed and rather preoccupied with his whisky. “And you, Uncle. You furnished the pistols.”

“That I did.”

“My God, I will tell Mrs. Woodhull about this. I must.” Worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, she abandons her decision to hurry inside to instead wheel back around on the men. “Thomas, dueling is illegal in the state of New York!”

“Well, I doubted I would convince him to travel to New Jersey in order to reach legal dueling grounds.” His father hands him the bottle of whisky, and he takes a long draw from it. Annie observes the color on his cheeks and neck, the blood dried under his fingernails. She is aware she is staring, but does not care. Thomas swallows, brushing the back of his hand across his lips. “And he is unlikely to press charges, since he accepted the terms and returned fire.”

“Thomas!”

“It was for your honor,” he mutters. Then, more loudly, “Now all of town knows that if they speak an unkind word against you, or to you, that the Woodhulls shall not stand for it and their crazed eccentric son shall return from York City to bandy a pistol about. Most people would rather not get shot.”

“Your sisters, Thomas!”

Mary Elizabeth and Jesse are just coming up to the age where they are expecting to debut in society. How can they be expected to find good husbands and secure their futures?

“What about my sisters?” he asks, leaning on the railing.

“Is every suitor to think that you will shoot them if they prove to disappoint?”

Bemusement darkens his face. “I certainly hope so!”

And with that, he caps the bottle of whisky, hands it back to his father, and descends the front steps with two large leaps. Indignant, Annie rearranges her wrap and follows him as he rounds towards the stables at the back of the house. He cannot just _walk away_ from her. She does not know what further protests she may lodge, but she would prefer to keep herself within distance to lodge them. Following Thomas into the stable, she stops just outside the stall where he has begun to tack up his horse. Uncle Woodhull appears at her side, startling her.

“Andromeda, what do you believe your Uncle Tallmadge or Uncle Brewster would have done were they here?” he asks. “Hell, they might do it once they arrive from Washington. Make more work Thomas yet again.”

“This is insanity. I am not so important as to—”

“Yes you are!” Thomas seethes, pausing from saddling his horse. Then, with a firm motion, secures the buckle.  

“Thomas…”

She feels her fingers unclench in her wrap, the heavy fabric falling down the back of her gown to hang loosely. He leads his horse out of the stall, past her and his father, and to the grass. Hat firmly on his head, he mounts. Anger dissolving in her blood, she approaches him. _My dear friend,_ she thinks. She softens, holding her hand up to him. He takes, smiling briefly, and presses his lips to her knuckles.

“I must go. I mustn’t be seen in town by the time the magistrate hears of this, so I am returning to my apartments in Harlem,” he says, ceding his distemper. “But you deserve every protection and every regard a man could provide, Annie.”

He grips the reins.

“Thomas?”

Now that all has come undone, he is her only friend in Setauket. His sisters are lovely, of course, but they are so much younger than she. There are many topics she cannot speak with them about, and they are not as fond as stargazing with her at her telescope as Thomas is. Perhaps she will return to Litchfield.

He blinks down at her. “I shall return once everything has calmed.”

Then he’s off and galloping away.

Forlorn, she watches the horizon long after he’s disappeared over it, a pale grey dot against a darkening sky. Then Uncle Woodhull touches her elbow. “Inside, Andromeda. It looks as though it will storm, and my wife will berate me to no end if I’ve allowed you to ruin your hair.”

 

 

 

They buried her in New Brunswick — the army was marching south for Yorktown, and there was no time or the men needed to take her body home to Setauket. Ben and Caleb split the plot in the graveyard of the local Presbyterian church, the only place will to bury a non-member. They do not ask questions about her, or the father of her child. The marker is simple, another concession to circumstance.

_Anna Smith Strong. Beloved Mother. April 14, 1750 - August 22, 1781._

“Say hello to Mama, Annie.”

Andromeda is three years old. Toddling towards the grave, she holds a posy of white flowers in her fist. “‘Lo, Mama.”

Bending, Abby holds her steady as she leans and nearly topples, placing the blossoms at the bottom of the grave marker. Tomorrow Ben and Caleb will come to New Jersey to bring Annie back to Litchfield. And while Abby visits the cemetery after church every Sunday to refresh the flowers on Anna’s grave, it is less common that she is able to bring her daughter to her. But she is a free woman now, living in a state where she is able to own land and run her own business. She does not live in comfort, but her life is comfortable.

Annie trails her small fingers over the etchings on the marker. Too young to read, her searching is tactile. Eyebrows scrunching together quizzically, she squats, tracing each and every letter and number. “Mama?”

She looks back over her shoulder. Abby knows the question is for her.

“Your mama is in heaven, child,” she explains. She points her finger towards the sky. “You can look for her up there. Her body rests here.”

“Mama sleeping?”

Oh to have the innocence of a babe. Annie is just coming up on the cusp of understanding the irrevocability of death, that there are things in life that cannot just be _undone._ Anna’s daughter has been given the life all children deserve, one of safety and warmth. She thinks that if a vase is knocked off a table and broken, the shards will be swept up and thrown away, and even if something has been broken, it will be replaced. That is Annie’s understanding of life — if something is broken, it will come back to her. A blanket, a toy, a vase. Broken things return.

But not mothers, she is beginning to understand.

“Mama’s body is sleeping, a deep long sleep no one has ever woken up from,” Abby says, carefully selecting her words. She could quote the bible, quote Revelations, but Annie is too young to grasp death, let alone the mysteries of God. Swallowing, she looks around the greenness of the cemetery, the rows of stone markers, the swaying branches of the trees in the breeze. “So Uncle Tallmadge and Uncle Brewster and I buried her here, so she’d be safe. But her soul is alive, up there in heaven, with Lord Jesus and God and all the angels.”

Stepping back clumsily, Annie looks up, her head leaned so far back that she almost falls onto her behind. Then, balling her tiny hands in fists, shouts.

“MAMA!”

Abby almost laughs.

“Don’t shout, sweetie. No need to shout,” she says, placing her hands on Annie’s shoulders. “She can hear you if you speak regular, or whisper.”

“Oh.” Her eyes, a deep dark brown, search the sky. Taking deep breaths, she brings her arms out and holds them, palms up. It’s a bright cerulean day, hardly any clouds at all in the sky. The few are cotton wisps. It’s a beautiful day, the kind that replaces every day in memory. It’s the sort of day where all good memories take place. “Mama in the stars?”

“And the clouds.” Abby says. And then she speaks the words that Annie will remember for the rest of her life: “Your Mama is everywhere. Wherever you are, she is.”

 

 

  

Anna has never experienced pain such as this in her life. There is no money for a midwife, and even though Ben offers money from his own purse there is no _time_ to rouse one and bring her here, and so he holds her upright on the edge of the bed, her feet braced on a low table and a stool as Abby kneels between her legs. The bed is on lease with the rest of the cottage, and they must spare the mattress.

Moaning, she rolls her head back to rest on Ben’s shoulder.

Between her thighs is a ring of fire. It builds and it builds, a terrible pressure, as the babe tries to come out. Faintly, she hears Abby telling her to push — _feels_ her body telling her to push — and catches the current. And at the moment she fears her body will rend itself in half, the pressure breaks and then the babe’s head is free. The rest of her comes sliding out with ease, in comparison.

“A girl,” Abby says breathlessly, catching her in a blanket.

The babe cries, and it breaks Anna’s heart.

“Give her to me,” she murmurs, fighting to remain awake. Tears stream down her cheeks, obscure her sight. And by God, she is so tired, but this child is all she has and it is her _child._ “Please, give her to me.”

She does not hear the splatter of blood landing on the floor, or the gasps of her friends.

Gaze on her crying daughter, her vision goes white.

 

 

 

… _I hope by the time this letter finds you, you are old enough to understand perhaps enough of love and longing and heartbreak to understand why I acted as I did. When I was young, perhaps younger than you are now, my father was tried and convicted of treason against the British crown and hanged, his assets seized. Your grandfather was a man of honor, a patriot who loved America deeply and instilled that same love in me. My mother had died when I was twelve, in childbed with my younger sister, who would only outlive our mother by a few days. So when my father died, I was alone, and alone in my mourning._

_A year earlier my childhood sweetheart had broken our engagement to marry the girl to whom his brother had been engaged; his brother had died in the riots at King’s College, and the girl’s dowry was sizable. My father’s execution proved to the town that he had made the correct decision in breaking with me. But I was twenty-two, with no home, no relations, and no money. I suffered poverty as well as I could, working for wages at Strong Tavern. Then I negotiated myself a marriage with the son of the owner — what the owner had as a predilection for numbers and business, his son had none. But I had proved myself capable in the months I had worked there. And so I married Selah Strong. I would later learn his father was amenable to the match because he, like my father, had patriot leanings._

_It was Selah who was my entrance into the war. A woman’s place, I was told, was in the home and having children. But I found ways to participate in the spy ring — I became the Signal of Setauket, coordinating messages coming in and going out. And in time, my involvement became deeper than that… and I became an adulteress for the first time. My childhood sweetheart was unsatisfied with his home life, and I was desperate to regain his affections as if it would undo all the hurts in my heart, the deep sorrow and yearning I felt to return to the simpler days of my childhood, before the war. I made bad choices, my darling. I made the same bad choice with him many times, and our relationship became a noxious, bitter thing that brought me much pain. Selah, thankfully, was unaware. I did feel affection for him, perhaps as much affection as I felt for my first fiancé. But I was so ignorant of love, then, that I thought what I felt was adequate. I was destined to be my own ruin._

_That is when your father entered my life, with the war…_

 

 

 

Caleb comes. So does the fever. His arrival to New Brunswick is delayed by the British line moving through Westchester in New York, but he arrives at a gallop with a smile plastered to his face. _Annie is having a baby._ Caleb is not the sort of man to care much for society’s conventions, a babe is a babe, a life to be cherished and celebrated. Especially so if the babe is Anna’s — he is willing to accommodate that the babe is also Oyster’s, already ready with a quip about the Major surprising him by lying with a woman outside of wedlock and packing his trunk to sail off to whichever British Isle to drag the sorry son of a bitch back to make an honest woman of her. So much is in his head that he does not notice the tension in Cicero’s expression until he is feet from the cottage’s door.

The boy catches his wrist, desperate in his warning.

“It was a long labor, and then the bleeding started. I thought — my mother said that she might not make it through the night, but she did. She fought. But know.” He stops, working his jaw. “She caught a chill, and now she’s warm. They’re saying it’s childbed fever.”

Caleb feels his heart skip a beat, then skitter, then knock back into rhythm.

“But the child?” he asks. It would break her, he knows it would, after all that Annie has lost in her life and for the cause. But thankfully, Cicero nods.

“A girl. Anna’s been too weak to name her,” he says, eyes falling. Then a tiny smile plants and blooms on his mouth, a true piece of joy. “But she’s pink, and pretty, and strong.”

“Like her mama,” Caleb answers, clapping him on the shoulder. “She’ll make it, Cicero.”

“But my mother said women don’t come back once they’ve got the childbed fever. Even the midwife Major Tallmadge brought ‘round said that—”

“Anna will come back.” Because she will. Of course she will. The sort of scrapes Anna’s made it out of before, she’ll fight the odds and win. Cicero looks less certain, and Caleb almost laughs, does laugh. And ignores the frantic tinge to the laugher. “She’s made it back from all sorts of ruckus, she won’t be brought down by a bit of a fever.”

The boy takes an expression that seems to read _if you say so._

Caleb pushes through the door. So eager is his denial that he does not smell the stench of blood that clings to the cottage even with the windows open three whole days to air the dwelling out. Ben startles, but relaxes back into his chair when he sees just who has entered, and Abby, dozing at the table, does not move at all. But Caleb only has eyes for the woman in the bed, pale and sweating and almost bluish-grey in coloring.

“Annie,” he gasps. Slowly, she stirs. Her hair is long and lank, plastered to her cheeks and forehead; he sits at the edge of the bed, combing it back with his fingers. “Annie, wake up, you’ve got someone I’d like to meet.” He refuses to see the purple crescents in her fingernails, nor the deep stamps of exhaustion under her eyes, nor the gaunt hollows in her cheeks. “Annie…” He brushes the backs of his fingers down the slope of her nose, waiting for it to scrunch up in annoyance. A hard knot forms in the back of his throat, but he swallows over it. “Annie…”

A soft groan at her lips, her eyes flutter open.

“Caleb?” she rasps, seemingly dazed. In the half-darkness, it takes her eyes a few moments to focus on his face. “You’ve come, Caleb.”

“Of course I came. Ain’t every day my Annie has a baby.”

A wan smile appears on her pale lips.

“Would you like to… Ben, do you have her?”

Caleb’s brow furrows. The babe is right in her arms, a slight bundle wrapped in white linen resting atop her abdomen. In his chair, Ben straightens up, scrubbing his hands over his face. His eyes are bloodshot, his face unshaven — it is apparent within a second of scrutiny of his person that he has not slept in days. “I’ve brought her to you,” is his gentle reply, sitting on the other side of the mattress. He takes her hand, placing it atop the child. “See, she’s right here Anna.”

“Oh.”

Sweat dripping down her front despite the sleeveless shift she’s wearing, she leans up off the pillows.

“Thank you, Ben,” she mumbles.

Their eyes catch over Anna’s listless form. It is in the grief shining in Ben’s eyes that Caleb realizes the totality of what has happened, and what is to come. Ben is never one to prematurely call a battle a defeat, but he looks at Anna the way Caleb has seen him look at other dying soldiers. Her time is come. _Does she know it?_ He wants to ask. He does not know if that would be a kindness or a cruelty.

“Let me see her,” he says, placing his hand over the baby and helping her to sit up some more. There is a tin cup of water on the bedside table. Ignoring the way his hand shakes, he brings it to her lips. Weak, she swallows. “How much have I missed? How many days ago was she born?”

“Four,” Ben answers.

“Four days? I am a sorry uncle.”

Snorting softly, Anna looks up at him. Upright, she seems more awake, and he leans in to wrap an arm around her shoulders. With a distant hum, she rests her head against his neck. He has a wide berth of the baby’s face now, and can see that she is awake. “I believe we shall forgive you your absence.”

A cry catches in his throat.

“Thank ye, Annie.”

Closing his eyes to restrain his tears, he leans down to brush a kiss on her forehead.

 

 

 

“So is this less preferable than dancing, or—”

Andromeda rolls her eyes, holding his arm with a loose familiarity. “And how many times has your mother — have _I_ offered to teach you to dance, Thomas? You just have no inclination to learn the steps.”

“I have no affinity for it.”

A _tsk_ sound rolls off her tongue. “You have an affinity for a great number of things which require dexterity and coordination. Any idiot can learn to dance, although I do suppose that is something which is hampering your interest in doing it.”

“Any idiot can learn to amputate, too.”

“But will the patient live?”

Thomas laughs. “I suppose that is the trick of it, yes. Now, tell me about this new fiancé—”

“You say that with such a tone of disdain!”

“I will believe it will end in marriage when this Mr. Cross places the ring on your fingers and swears his vows in front of God and me, with a shotgun in my lap.” With a giggle, Annie hides her face in his arm. Thomas pats her hand. “You said his family is French?”

“His father fought in the revolution and settled in Alexandria after the war. Mrs. Washington—”

“You say that so casually. _Lady Washington said to me over tea—_ ”

Together, they take the steps up to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, he holding the door for her as they enter. He is finally making good on his promise to show her the cadaver laboratory, which is making good on a dare from a few good _years_ ago if he is being honest, from his days as a student here. Andromeda rarely balks at anything, and though he is eager to see if she swoons and faints like many a first year, he does also wish to finally have someone captive enough to listen to his research and theories.

“Shush, since the General passed she is quite lonely, and takes out her loneliness on every unwed woman of marriageable age in her social circle. But yes, she vouched for his family, over tea. As did Colonel Tallmadge, so speak nothing more of Philip for I am certain you will again bring firearms into the conversation.”

“If I have an estimation of Mr. Brewster, he will have already done that the moment your carriage headed north.”

She sighs. Half because she knows Thomas is correct, half because she does not need another factor scaring Philip off of marriage. “Well, if it wasn’t the bastardy—”

“Aren’t the French more lax about that?”

“To a limit.”

He laughs, leading her through winding hallways, to the back staircase that will lead them to the morgue in the basement. “Well, if all else shall fail, I shall surrender my bachelorhood to you.”

They both burst into peals of laughter.

“Thomas, the only way you are going down the aisle is because your mother has a knife to your back,” Annie says. It is a ludicrous thought, imagining Thomas _married._ If nothing else, he has been engaged in felicitous matrimony with his studies from a young age. She cannot even bring to mind a single incidence where he was so much as _interested_ in a girl.

They descend to the basement together, a slight unease creeping up over her.

“Nervous?” he asks.

“Of course not.”

“Fainting is entirely natural,” he assures her.

“I will _not_ faint,” she edges out. “My mother fought in the war. She saw her share of bloodshed and dead bodies, I am made of stern stuff.”

Shaking his head, Thomas looks to the floor.

“What?”

“Your _father_ , however.”

“What about him?” she snaps.

“Nothing, nothing,” he concedes. They are standing outside the solid oak door separating the dark and chilled morgue from the rest of the school. “By all accounts of the Battle of Setauket, he was not much for enduring the sight of blood. But he was British and you are thoroughly American and I am sure cured of such a defect.”

“How is it you hear of these accounts and I do not?”

Mouth shaped into an indignant pout, she looks down her nose at him. Which is hardly a feat, considering he scrapes a bare three inches on her when in his tallest boots.

“I imagine because it is a secret law you are forbidden to hear them,” he answers. He knows that her guardians have voiced — more than once, always when they thought he was more preoccupied with a book or an experiment — fear that she might leap onto the next ship to discover her British family, if there were any left. In truth, Thomas doubts the popular thought that Major Hewlett is dead. After all, wouldn’t man be barely into his sixties?

He gestures to the door. “Shall we?”

“Secret laws?” she asks, as they step into the morgue.

“But I am not much for convention,” he assures her.

Humming, she folds her arms behind her back, clasping her hands. He watches as she walks up and down the rows of cadavers, growing pale. But she remains steady, leaning over dissections of the brain, then the heart. “It is why I tolerate you,” she murmurs. Then breathlessly asks, pointing to the body covered mostly with a sheet. “What is that one?”

“Ah.” His face brightens. “That is my newest acquaintance, a rather lovely fellow named Mr. Burns.”  

“What is it you are studying?”

“The nervous system.”

She halts a few feet from the table. “May I see?” she inquires, genuinely curious despite her trepidation. Thomas also finds himself full of trepidation — a body stripped of its skin and muscle down to the sinew and nerves is an unsettling sight. He already finds himself with the butcher label without exposing a lady to the sight — but she _has_ asked. “Come on,” she teases. “How many evenings have I forced you to endure my astronomical ramblings?”

“This is hardly the same.”

“Once you told me you thought your ears were bleeding.”

He shows her, carefully pulling back the sheet to reveal Mr. Burns’ arm. Biting her lip, Annie comes closer, hands once more clasped behind her back as if she might touch the cadaver by mere accident. Nervous himself for some odd reason, Thomas dons his gloves, and picks up the hand. “My theories — well, there are reflexes we are born with, yes? If you do this,” he stimulates the palm of the cadaver, and its fingers roll inwards, “to an infant, the result will be the same.”

“Good God,” she gasps.

“And I — I was wondering, my thought is, how is it these reflexes continue after death? A baby is too clumsy to stimulate many of its own actions. We must draw a stimulus down its palm,” he repeats the action on the corpse, “in order to create the action.”

“Yes,” Annie says, nodding. She shuffles closer.

“Now, look at this.”

He retrieves the electrometer he acquired the week past, turning it on. “This generates small pulse of — of electricity. Similar to the way Benjamin Franklin’s machine worked, it creates a small current, and then with this I can—” He touches the metal rod to the end of the nerve in the man’s forearm. The fingers move once more. “Create the same response.”

She worries her lip between her teeth. “What does that mean?”

“That life is electricity,” he blurts out.

She gives him the same blank look he’s received from many of his colleagues. “It is not that I disbelieve you, I just do not… elaborate, please.”

“Think of…” his brain churns hopelessly, until he lands on a possible route of explanation. “Think of your stars. There are forces acting between the planets and the stars and moons, right? We call them natural forces — gravity and magnetism and in that, perhaps, electrical impulses? And all of this causes stars to be born and live and die, and from the stars we get stardust which can turn into planets and moons and—”

“Thomas,” she interrupts him, albeit patiently.

“Yes.” He takes a deep breath, recharging his electrometer. “We build machines to obtain electrical impulses, but what if that power is already within us? I was considering that our whole lives, we do not use external stimulation to move our muscles. What if we have some current within us, that we somehow control? The same current that controls other things in the universe, harnessed within us? Everything must act under a natural force, I do think.”

“It makes… sense,” Annie says, carefully considering the action he repeats on Mr. Burns, the forceful movement of his arm and fingers. “But what about after death?”

Thomas considers his words carefully.

“Our natural force must return to the universe. To the atmosphere, to the stars, and to rest of us.”  

 

 

 

The sleeping infant pays no mind to the adults arguing over her, even as they decide her fate. For a year now, she has lived under the care of Abigail in a house in Newburgh leased by her guardians. But the war is drawing to a close.

“He has a right to know, Ben,” Washington says placidly. “He has the right to choose to acknowledge her as his daughter.”

No one has written to Edmund Hewlett. It is half a result of the fact that no one knows where he resides, and half a result of the fact that no one pays him any mind. If he wants to claim his daughter, may he find her because he has returned to America in search of her mother. If he does not return, then damn him. Damn him twice, Ben thinks, knowing that Caleb agrees with him.

“No,” he says.

“He does not?” Washington asks, raising an eyebrow. In his arms, Andromeda sleeps, her small body still but for the rise and fall of her chest.

Caleb does not pause in cleaning his gun. “Anna asked us to take care of ‘er daughter. Made us promise her, before she’d quit this life. She also made us promise ‘er daughter would be an _American._ We won the war, General. Little Annie will have the life ‘er mother dreamed for her. Don’t you think it right?”

He sighs down at the child in his arms.

Wisps of brown hair cover her hair, warm breath passing through opened pink lips. “I do suppose we have no way of contacting Mrs. Strong’s Major Hewlett?”

“No,” Ben answers. “And her husband would know the child wasn’t his, and would punish her for it. As would Richard Woodhull, so any attempt to return Anna’s father’s lands to her would be — she would suffer for it. I will take her to Connecticut with me, as my ward.”

She is a beautiful child.

“I could speak to Martha. She would not object to our grandchildren having another playmate — surely no one would speak ill of a bastard raised in my household.”

Caleb looks up, gaze flickering from Ben to Washington and back.

“Sir—”

“I promised her, sir,” Ben answers through gritted teeth. “I promised Anna. It is because of my doing that she — that she fell in with Hewlett in the first place. That I did not — much could have been done to prevent her from dying as she did. To prevent this child from being fatherless.”

“Much could still be done,” Washington remarks.

Caleb braces himself.

“Absolutely not! It is not what Anna wanted! She did not want her daughter to suffer being raised by a man who resents her mother, and to be honest sir, I will not allow it,” Ben argues, gesticulating wildly.

“You will not?” Washington asks.

“No.”

Ben breathes heavily.

Grinning in a way that is entirely humorless, Washington shifts the small Miss Andromeda in his arms, allowing her to rest upon his shoulder. “I should say, then, that you are ready to take her on as your ward Benjamin. I assume this endeavor will be undertaken with Caleb’s aide?”

“Naturally, sir,” Caleb answers.

He nods.

“Then you shall have as much help from Mount Vernon as we can provide you with. Mrs. Strong saved the Revolution twice over. It will not be done to allow her daughter to want for anything.”

 

 

 

“She may not have much time left,” Abby tells them when Anna wakes up with more energy than the past few days. “I have seen this before. One last surge of life before it dims. We must accept that this may be her last day, and make the most of it.”

It is all but confirmed by Anna herself, who though acting with more alertness and force than since the labor pangs began, acts with the determination of a dead man walking towards the gallows. She feeds Andromeda, newly named, and then hands her to Caleb, as if understanding the holding the babe to his chest is all that may be a comfort to him in this time. Then, gaze steely, she looks at Ben. “I am going to write a letter.”

“To Hewlett?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “To my daughter. But I fear — I may grow tired. I will need your help.”

 

 

 

When complete, the letter is three pages long. Ben and Abby took it upon themselves to ensure that the script remained legible, but in Anna’s hand. It is the only way that this child will ever know her mother, it must be entirely hers. When she signs, _Mama_ she is quaking, trembling from head to toe, and collapses against the pillows when it is finished.

“When should I give this to her?” Ben asks, staring at the parchment as if it was the finest gold.

Closing her eyes, Anna exhales through pursed lips. “When she is ready.”

“How will I know?”

She is silent for a long moment. “She will want answers not because she thinks they will make her whole. Do not let her think suffering will make her whole. Do not let her think my suffering will complete her.”

“Anna?”

“She will learn to be happy for herself. And then she will be ready.” Abby takes her hand, folding their fingers together. Breathing heavily, Anna closes her eyes, tears escaping one by one into her hairline. “Do not allow her to make my mistakes. Promise me, Ben.”

He attempts to answer once, then twice. But if he opens his mouth, his voice will crack and he will cry. Squeezing her fingers, he kisses her palm. He hopes she understands.

 

 

 

And so she lingers in the doorway between worlds. Caleb is nigh inconsolable, pacing the small cottage with Andromeda in his arms, rocking and keeping her quiet and content. He hopes she does not know that her mother is leaving just as she is beginning. Ben leaves to regain his composure under the guise of needing air, and Cicero has left to fetch more water to keep Anna’s face and neck cool.

He takes the empty spot at Anna’s side.

“She has your nose,” he says.

A ghost of a smile appears on her face. “No she does not.”

“She doesn’t,” he agrees, laughing. “We will have much to explain to Setauket if she resembles him too much, so let’s hope she grows up as beautiful as her mother.”

“I do wish I had gotten to see her grow,” Anna whispers, weakly lifting her arm to stroke Andromeda’s cheek. “She is so small. She needs — she will need so much, and I will not be here to give it to her.”

“I will.”

It is important. Caleb Brewster always comes through when it is important. He will not fail Anna, or her child.

“Promise me, Caleb.”

“I promise, Annie.”

 

 

 

Abby bathes her face and shoulders with cool water. There is nothing she can do for Anna’s pain, but she can keep her clean at the least. She shoos the men outside to strip the clothes under her body — she has bled so much, and continues to bleed. Abby does not want Anna to die in a bed of her own blood, and replaces the linens with clean ones and changes her into a fresh shift. Then she returns to dabbing at her face with rags, as if with enough care and attention her fever will break and the color will return to her cheeks.

“She needs — a girl needs a mother,” Anna whispers.

“She has one,” Abby answers. “She will know her mother. We would not let her forget.”

“No, no,” she replies, shaking her head fitfully. “You are a mother, you must understand me. Andromeda needs a mother. She is a girl, she will need a woman to guide her. Promise me, Abby.”

Her hand does not pause in washing the sweat from her collarbones.

“I promise you, Anna,” she answers forcefully. It is the least that she can do, after all that they have endured together. She can take care of Anna’s child as Anna once took care of hers. She can do this one last thing for her friend. “Mother to mother.”

And with that, she is at peace. Her face going slack, she opens her fever-bright eyes. “Is it night time yet? I would like to see the stars, Abby.”

 

 

 

Annie escapes to the veranda, patting down her hair. It feels as though some of her pins must have fallen out in all the dancing, and she would be loath to lose them — a gift from Uncle Brewster for her twentieth birthday. _Your mother would have hated me for giving these to you as a present,_ he told her with a conspiratorial smile, _which means as your uncle I must._ They are truly gaudy things, mother of pearl and gilt enamel, far too fussy than any hair accoutrement has a right to be.

She loves them, of course.

The ball is overwhelming in the way many are, especially so in the federal district. Uncle Tallmadge and his wife are ensconced in their own corner, and she is sure her godsister and godbrothers have scattered to every level of the house and she may find any one of them with ease, but she would like some air first.

Philip Cross.

Her cheeks color, but he is so _charming._ But so was Andrew, when he was courting her. She knows she must put this all from her mind.

Taking deep gulps of air, she leans her forearms onto the railing. It is a clear night. By habit, she finds north and then the twenty-fourth degree of ascension, searching the sky until she finds herself. The stars are not so bright here as they are in Litchfield or Setauket, but she finds Gemini and Orion with ease even without her telescope. She finds constellation after constellation until her heart stops pounding and her head is clear.

 

 

 

In the end, Abby was right. By the small hours of the morning Anna has faded, her mind progressing forward already into the next realm even as her body fights on. But they expected this — she has survived the hell of a bad delivery and then seven days of puerperal fever, to fight to the very end. She sits up in bed, barely aware of her surroundings beyond Andromeda resting on her stomach. If she can smell the reek of death and blood, she does not let on.

“I see my mother… and my father… and my sister,” she whispers, half-afraid.

Burying her face into a handkerchief, Abby tamps down her emotions. There is so much she feels, but will not feel until Anna is truly gone. She deserves her full attentions, now. Her gaze casts across the bed to Ben, in his chair, hands on Anna’s arm and shoulder. To Caleb, kneeling on the floor, in possession of Anna’s hand. Cicero guards the end of the bed, troubled but determined to remain.

Andromeda is wholly unaware, squeaking softly as she moves in her blanket.

She rises and falls on her mother’s stomach with every breath. She rises, and falls. Rises, and falls. Rises, falls, and—

Stops.

They all wait, staring in horror at her chest, waiting for the next rise. They wait, holding their own breath, for ten seconds, then twenty, then thirty. But the next rise does not come, just a rattle of death. Anna’s eyes, deep dark rounds, fall closed. And with that, Andromeda at last sense that something is deeply wrong. Fists balling, she begins to wail — but the other occupants in the room are paralyzed. “She’s gone,” Ben whispers.

“Oh, Annie,” Caleb cries, leaning until his forehead touches the mattress. “Annie…”

Andromeda wails climb into screams.

Cicero clings to the footboard of the bed. “Mama, shouldn’t someone… the baby...”

Staggering to his feet, Caleb collects Andromeda into his arms. Wrapping himself around her, he trips away from the bed, turning his back to the stage of death and mourning. He shushes the infant, rocking her as tears stream down his cheeks.

“Oh, Annie,” he cries. “Our poor little Annie.”

 

 

 

Ben knows that he must pass on the letter before the wedding comes to a close, he no longer has any excuse to keep it from her. He finds her and Thomas bent together in the corner of the drawing room, glasses of wine in hand, smiling at each other like they were the only other person in the world. This is the same room where Abe ruined her own mother’s chances at happiness, he knows.

The parchment burns his palms.

May this begin to put things to rights.

 

 

 

Not four months later, the newlyweds are on a ship from Barcelona to Genoa. They are seeking a man named Hewlett researching astronomy at the University of Padua in Italy.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N:** Many thanks if you've read this all the way to the bottom. I encourage you to yell at me in the comments. Many thanks to my beta, theletterdee. All errors remaining are mine, especially the horrid cadaver metaphor which is a holdover from a cadaver lab I attended my senior year of high school during a brief delusion I was going to become a doctor and not an early American historian.


End file.
